// 14 [all the world makes great blood] // broadcast mind
i. /tick [girl-child]
You're in the kitchen, making pancakes. Funny shapes, this time (even though Tara makes them better), and there's sunlight filtering in through the window, making patterns on the walls.
They look like kaleidoscope-things, moving and reflecting the sway of leaves from the tree in the front yard, and there's a song on the radio that you don't know all the words to, but you're singing it anyway, making it up as you go along.
But there's a burning smell.
You look down and think oh false alarm, I guess but the patterns on the wall catch the edge of your vision because they're no longer transparent-golden, they're red.
No they're ...not?
It's gone. All normal-like and the song's over now, but another one's coming up and hey, another one you like (only this time you know the words) and you flip the pancake over in the butter and---
---the butter is red, too.
There's a stain flowering on the surface of the cake, the stink of copper-metallic-meat-rot and you drop the spatula, back up against the counter and bite back a scream because your mom is calling now - you can hear her.
Mom?
On the stairs now. Calling out for Mom and yet unaware that she's lying on the couch just behind you, arms and legs akimbo, mouth slightly open, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. And then, as her head turns with a wet crack, she's staring at you as you ascend the stairs.
But you're still calling, always calling and never getting an answer Mom, where are you? and the hallway seems longer, somehow.
The air smells of bananas and rotting meat.
ii. [dwarf]
You're in your room, flipping through your journals, looking for that one page, that one thing you wrote down that will make sense of all of this and let you put the pieces back, but there's nothing there and all the pages are blank.
So are your walls. The furniture's gone and it's just a white room full of green light and then it's gone, too.
It's back to the living room like you never went up those stairs at all, and you didn't because your Mother is right there, behind you, hand cold on your shoulder as she smiles and tells you that You can't go up the stairs, Dawnie, because you're not real.
A twitch and a roll of her eyes before she's on the floor, milk-eyed and rictus grin and then just a pile of dust.
iii. [maiden]
Now the dust is blowing - sands through the hourglass of your lampless living room - broken glass and splinters littering the floor - a book and a bell and a candle and the hiss of magic in the air.
Your mother's picture staring back at you from the circle of black salt, and the incantation falling from your lips all wrong all wrong she's going to come back wrong because oh god this is the wrong book - it's not spells it's one of Xander's comic books and these words---
(eruliaf tseggib ym)
---they're not the right ones and oh shit you think you can hear her, hear something shuffling outside past the tree and over the stones across the grass and you know it's reaching---
(my biggest failure)
---as you reach to turn the pages of the wrong book because there's something there you need to see but all the pages do is slit your fingertips and now they're wet with blood, stuck together, ink and line and illustration running together into a murky puddle as you hear your sister call out--
Mom? Mommy?
Buffy, no! Leaping over the flames you didn't know were behind you (they're everywhere now, but they're not even hot) grabbing hold of her by the arm, by the blonde ponytail, by anything just to stop her from opening the door because it's something else out there. Not your Mother. Not really. Just something wearing her skin.
iv. [lady]
You blink. It's a second - less than a second, and Buffy's gone. No evidence of spells or flames or anything out of the ordinary. Just back to a normal day in Sunnyhell, and the quiet sounds of the windchimes on your front porch.
Click-clack of the door latch - it opens slowly and it's just Spike, but he's so bruised and his eye is swollen shit and oh fuck is that skull peeking out from the split flesh all peroxide and scarlet and---
You know this is you fault, Bit. As he sticks a finger in, twisting the wound and grinning just before he catches fire.
His screams don't last very long, but they shake you up on the inside and you can feel your skin still humming with them. A moment later you realize that it's not a pile of dust, but a pile of fine glass - blowing past your face and scratching hotly at your cheeks before you find the strength to turn away.
Now the flashes start in earnest.
v. [youth]
The Magic Box.
You see them, somber and sitting round a table. Xander and Willow and Spike and Giles. Buffy's there, too.
(Why blood? Why Dawn's blood? Why couldn't it be like a-a lymph ritual or something?)
They know what you are now, and what you're not. That you're not a girl, just a Key, a key that opens a horrible door for a horrible God and that if she gets a hold of you it's going to be the end of everything.
They talk about your blood. They can't see you as you stand there, sick, shaking, crying and full of rage as you hear them all decide that killing you might just be an option.
You know, if the ritual is started. Only way to stop it.
Giles is matter of fact about it. You can see that it hurts him, but that doesn't stop him from deciding. That you don't matter. That you're not a person but a thing and you can be sacrificed for the greater good.
It's okay, you think, for a moment - because deep down you know it's true.
What's left of Tara tells you this as you pass her. Then she keens and covers her face with her hands.
Hey, she says, in a moment of clarity. It's okay, D-dawnie. Y-you were made to open doors to bad ...places. It's your gift.
vi. [knight]
When Tara peers out from behind her fingers, she's no longer Tara at all. She's Ben.
Now you're screaming in his face, kicking, reaching for his hair, nails raking along his arms as he drags you toward the platform.
Apologies all the way, eyes averted and puppydog grin all haywire and god knows how many feet above the ground on a tower built on pure madness and scrap metal.
You tell him you hope he chokes on his own vomit for sharing a body with that thing that Hellgod. Glory. You hate every apologetic word, every cowardly step toward the place where you know you're going to die --- where that shitty portal is going to open and make the dimensions play tonsil hockey with the apocalypse just because you exist.
You hate him so much you wonder if you could choke the life out of him if he'd just let go of your hands.
You hate every one of them for leaving you to this. For not trying harder. Even though you understand why they're doing it. The understanding hurts worse than the knife that's already making shallow cuts along your arms and legs.
The knife that's plunged into Spike when all he's tried to do was save you like Buffy asked him to, and maybe - just maybe because he wanted to himself, because deep down he's good and he's brave and it doesn't matter how fucked up he is because---
(oh fuck)
He's smiling as he staggers back, (why is he wearing a Batman shirt? Is that Xander's) no averting doomsday here, and there are a hundred apologies in that smile, and all of them conspire to break your heart and burst it from the inside out.
After what seems like an hour, he hits the ground with a sickening thud.
(Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you other than dead. 'Course it's her blood.)
You retch. Spitting bile on your bleeding bare feet, no longer caring if you stand, giving up, giving out, giving over just get it over with and someone please kill me at war inside your head.
vii. [queen]
And then you see her.
It's already open behind you, and the roar from the skies is deafening. Buffy's radiant with something you can't name - a little in love with her own death - with all of it - and when she loosens your bonds and takes you in her arms you believe
that it's possible to be okay.
You know you're going to lose her - you've already lost her - the look on her face is key - it's already been decided.
So many things you want to say, to ask - but you know the words before speaks them.
Dawn, listen to me, listen. I love you. I will always love you. But this is the work that I have to do.
She stops there. (She's not supposed to stop there) Brushes the hair from your face and smiles before she shoves you backward and into the mouth of Hell.
viii. [king]
Hell is a casket six underground, apparently.
Beating your fists against the lid, nails broken, fingers raw and still pulsing from cuts by the wrong book (or maybe the blank book, you can't remember) but you don't care because this terror is eating you from the inside and it's someone else's terror.
She's beside you in the casket, your elder sister, shriveled and dull-haired, whispering against your cheek as you scream from underneath the earth.
This is where you put me, Dawn. I'm here because of you. This is my place. Death is MY gift. Mine, Dawnie. Buffy's tone is hollow, mocking. Cruel. It may or may not be reminiscent of Yazoo's voice. Mine. Get out. Get out!
//GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT//
ix. [abbess]
Anatole.
Yeah, it waits.
The sky is rippling, and your steps steam as they trail along the rooftop. You're different, but you don't know exactly how.
There's dirt on your clothes, in your hair and underneath your nails as you make your way along the sill. Something here you forgot. Out of time, out of tune, out of place as the ledge starts to crumble before you can make it inside.
(Hey that's my sister's axe in there)
Grasping at stone, at wood and glass and white-hot fucking pain because the glass is through your palm and you still can't hold on.
A dark stain of red sliding down the stones (there was no axe, Dawn) and onto more stones. Ruined ones. Slick with slime and brackish water. Everything here is grey.
x. [magician]
There's a path. It's lined with muffins.
Your dress is blue, resplendent with a striped pinafore, and everything feels right and upside down again. You tumbled down the hole and then you were little and then you were big and now it's all just back to where it was before.
The silver haired man doffs his hat and smiles mirrorshards as you pass. He's a reflection of himself, and you don't know wether to pause or to run.
You close your eyes and just continue.
Just up ahead, you see it.
It's been waiting this whole time, and it knows just what you are.
So do they as they step out from the shadows. All smiles and sweet words.
The air is full of clockwork butterflies.
Geared shoes pitching you forward - forced steps toward the worldflickering door - a hundred pictures flashing by its surface and lighting the eyes of those gathered there.
They turn on you, advancing slowly. The shoes no longer allow you to turn back. They tick, click, and a gear grinds upward into the arch of your foot, scraping skin and beginning the blood flow. They're whirring now, lubricated by blood, and you sway on your feet. But you're caught and held steady.
It's Riza, and there's sadness in her eyes as she grabs your wrists, holds you steady. A small, red butterfly lands in her hair. The sadness doesn't stop her from drawing her firearm and placing it against your temple.
There's a lone protest - you turn at the sound of Spike's voice only to find his smoky outline ghosted in the air - holding just long enough for your voice to break before he evaporates into ash on the end of Anderson's bayonet.
I'm sorry Dawn. I really need to get home. Apology and comfort in Riza's tone just before she fires.
xi. [hag]
There's pain. It's indescribable. It doesn't lessen or end. It does nothing but build. The mist amplifies it. And your blood (which emanates a green light, curiously) opens the Door. Halts it for whomever has claimed your life just now, stained their hands with it.
Alphonse is sorry, too, when he kills you. He only wants to see his Brother. As you lie on the dais before the door and the blood leaks from your ears, you think you hear a voice (is that Edward?) call his name.
Riful isn't sorry - or if she is she makes no outward apology - it's nothing personal- her eyes seem to say. But it's hard to separate the truth from the lies anymore.
They kill you in succession, and you're awake, aware, feeling it each time - Johan, Utena, Galatea, Hope, Junpei, Sasori, Byakuya, Priscilla.
We all just want to go home
Kaien is merciful, he thinks. When he believes you to be unconscious - slits your throat.
This place decides otherwise. You feel everything.
Jason tells you it will be painless - quick. Anatole turns him into a liar. You try to say something, through the blood. It only bubbles on your lips and bursts in a last rush of air.
After this, you lose count. It doesn't matter.
Your sister watches through the trees. You didn't know she had a twin.
xii. /tock [death]
What was it you said before?
I'm like a lightning rod for pain.
Yes, that was it.
And today it's true. (Today is forever) And forever after.
//